5 Tips for Creating Customer Journey Maps

Starting out on the process of customer journey mapping might, at first, appear daunting – and it certainly does present challenges which shouldn’t be underplayed.

However, it need not be as complex as it might seem. Here are five tips you can follow to get you started.

The exercise is, essentially, getting the whole organisation to think and act in a more customer-centric way so get as much buy-in as possible from senior management and right down the organisation.

The first thing you need to do to is to pick one user journey and closely define the parameters and nature of the activity. This way it will be easier to contain and direct thinking. Determine who is going to participate (and refer to the customer journey being plotted to decide those in the business who are best placed to contribute) and then decide what techniques you are going to use to kick the process off. This might be data analysis, brainstorming, interviews, flowcharting or any other mechanism that occurs to your group and seems appropriate to the desired outcome.

Approach gathering and recording the findings in a systematic and structured manner. Take the sources you have picked and give the team specific responsibilities for interrogating the data; provide relevant matrixes for recording findings grouping them under helpful headings such as;- Customer objectives and actions
– Customer problems, barriers and issues
– Where and how do customers interact with your business
– What are their attitudes and feelings
– Organisational strengths and weaknesses in responding

Consider the journey as a series of stages and make sure you analyse each stage in as much detail as possible. The stages might look something like this:- How users become aware of your brand/company/products;- Where and how users look for the sort of products/ services you offer;- Where and how (and probably why) people buy these particular products;
– What type of delivery, aftersales and other ancillary services they might need and expect.

It might help to rank information gathered from these activities in terms of its importance and criticality to the customer journey. This doesn’t need to be too complex or granular; perhaps something as simple as:- High – of vital importance.
– Medium – of some importance but not integral.
– Low – of interest but not central to the action being considered.You can determine yourself in the context of your business and the journeys being delineated how best to approach this but it can be a useful way of grouping information to make it manageable. Putting the findings on individual slips and sorting them is one way of grouping and prioritising.

These are a just a few suggestions as to how you might approach this exercise. If you would like to discuss other possible methods or the subject of customer journeys in general, you can ring us on +44(0)800 024624 or email us at hello@ux247.com.